An invention from Royal Philips Electronics prevents TV viewers from switching the channel during commercials or fast-forwarding past commercials when watching DVR content. Viewers would be released from the freeze only after paying a fee to the broadcaster. The freeze would be implemented on a program-by-program basis, giving viewers a choice at the start of each one.

Oh, that’s a super choice, thanks Philips!

Are you @*$!#%^ kidding me? This is one of those stories, if released on April 1st, would have been innocently laughed at, then forgotten about. But truth is scarier than fiction.

(more…)

Artist: Nirvana
Album: Nevermind (1991)
Song: Lounge Act

I’m in between ripping CDs with Apple Lossless, so I don’t have too many CDs on my computer. Of the 17,000+ songs I do have, I only have 50 in lossless. So, this means you get Nirvana, and there’s a good chance it may be them next week as well.

Learn more about Nirvana.

On September 10, 2001, during half-time of Monday Night Football, I wrote down some lines to a song I was writing. That song, eventually titled September Snow, started out as one thing, and quickly meant something else the next day, September 11, 2001.

Going back and reading these lines the next day, I tried to reflect and think why I was writing this just hours before 9/11. Was I falling down? Was the world falling down? New York? At the very least, it was quite odd reading these words and watching hours and hours of the twin towers falling down to rubble.

Checking some old files, I found the words, which are printed below.

I don’t seem to react much to pain.
My recurrence stems from my disdain.
Fractured feelings of right pass wrong.
I don’t want to believe I’m falling down.

I suppose that my life could change.
If I picked up the strife that I waived.
Wrestling demons I break at the seams.
I can’t really perceive I’m falling down.

I try to make it.
I feel I can make it.
My conscience is naked.
My body is vacant.

There is no one I’ve found to be within my walls.
They came crumbling down.
There is no one I found. I don’t need to fear.
That’s why I’m here and you’re there.

Bryan Los 09.10.2001

I’m not thanking Steve Jobs’ Apple, but The Beatles’ Apple Corps. Finally, we Beatles fans need not wait much longer for the official remastered Beatles catalog. The full catalog. The real deal. Wowz0rz!

“We’re remastering the whole Beatles catalog, just to make it sound brighter and better and getting proper booklets to go with each of the packages. I think it would be wrong to offer downloads of the old masters when I am making new masters. It would be better to wait and try to do them both simultaneously so that you then get publicity of the new masters and the downloading, rather than just doing it ad hoc.”

Neil Aspinall, managing director of Apple Corps

(more…)

1966: A Documentary. This interview took place on December 28, 1983. The interviewer, my father, Leonard Los, is speaking with a “well renowned drummer,” Greg Dominique (pronounced DOMAIN)– don’t ask me!

I remember well, going to the Holyoke library and researching facts such as baseball standings and food prices for 1966– which is the year the interview is about. The interview is mostly about music and Greg’s involvement in an area band called “The Gladiators.” The interview does stray off on some topics, but adheres mostly to music. In between in interview, which is broken into sections, a song is played from 1966, almost always dealing with the previous conversation.

This interview also contains the earliest recorded voice of myself. At the end of side 2, my father hands the microphone to me, and I give a speech, although obviously pre-written, I give it none the less. During the interview, you can hear me and my sister yelling, and my mother in turn, yelling at us.

(more…)

As of today, scriptedlizard.com is hosted by another company, BelaHost. They’ve done some work for me on another one of my sites, and I really thought their service was second to none.

One Down, Three To Go

I will move all of my sites to BelaHost in the coming weeks. Because two of them use SSL, and I must have little to no downtime, I have to be smart when moving them. I don’t want to piss of customers.

Moving over the MySQL database and all associated SL files was a piece of cake. I had no real problems, except some characters got screwed up when importing my MySQL tables– about 30 apostrophes. Other than that, smooth sailing.

After four days, it’s actually quite nice to be able to see my site up and running. I won’t tell who my old host was until after the move is complete.

PS - And if you can’t tell, my new host uses FreeBSD. Sorry Linux.

It was twelve years ago, Friday, April 8, 1994. That’s a day I will never soon forget. And because of server/connectivity issues, you’re getting this today.

I just got home from school, and fixed myself a grilled cheese sandwich. For some strange reason, the radio was on downstairs, and my parents and a friend were in the room. I was sitting in the chair, eating my sandwich, no cares in the world. As fast as a radio wave, my world was changed forever.

In the midst of a tasty treat, I heard news that the body of Kurt Cobain had been discovered. He apparently died of a self-inflicted shotgun blast. During those few seconds, every image and thought of Cobain and Nirvana flashed through my head. I asked myself why. Why would someone choose to end their life? I thought, and still do think that suicide is ultimately for the weak, and a selfish way of solving problems, perceived or real. The people around you suffer, not you.

(more…)

Artist: The Beatles
Album: The Beatles 1
Song: Something (1969)

I spent a few hours Saturday perfecting the bass line to this song. It’s one of my favorites. Using my Rickenbacker 4003 bass and my Ampeg bass amp to get some really great bottom end, I finally got it. It’s been a while since I last played, and my fingers have some new blisters now.

Learn more about The Beatles.

Without going into too much detail, let me just say that last week was a horrible week. Awful! But, this new week already looks much brighter.

I’ve been screwed by spammers, my web host and/or my ISP, and a few other’s I won’t mention at this time. In short, and as if you haven’t heard by now, last week was simply the worst.

SPAM Drop

Some [insert bad word here] has been trying to spam my blog with posts that contain about 100 links. WordPress automatically adds these to the moderation queue, so they never actually get on the site. However, this jerk figured he couldn’t spam that way, so he commented on like 30 articles, just leaving the same stupid comment with a link. What a [insert very bad word here].

(more…)

Republican Rep. Tom DeLay of Texas, the House of Representatives’ fallen majority leader, withdrew on Tuesday from a re-election race he was in danger of losing due to scandals and said he would quit Congress by mid-June.

It’s nice to see such misfortune happen to the worst of people. To say I’m not giddy with delight would be a lie one the caliber of the bombs DeLay dropped regularly during his term in Congress. Good riddance to such rubbish. It’s guys like this that make Washington the cesspool it has become.

Tom, don’t let the door hit you on the way out, and be sure to take some of your “friends” with you.